Question

Chapter 11

1. Explain the uses of closed-ended, open-ended, and contingency questions. What are the primary purposes, advantages, and disadvantages of each?
2. What sorts of biases can be introduced into a questionnaire because of question sequencing? What sorts of strategies do researcher implement to eliminate these biases?
3. In your opinion, what are the most important pitfalls in questionnaire construction? Why?

Answer 1

Close ended questions are mostly preferred in settings where questions are quantitative, specific and require one word answers to get the desired data or intended information. Open ended questions are mostly used when the questions are qualitative and descriptive needing explanation. Contingency questions are the questions which are framed and outlined to best suit the situations or circumstances prevailing.

Open ended questionnaire has the primary purpose of limiting the respondents answer to the options provided in the questionnaire. The advantages of this type of questionnaire is that it is time saving and effective as the responses provided are easy to decode and interpret. The major disadvantage is that information or data might not exactly reflect what the surveyor intends to identify or determine. Answers are short and cannot be explored so proper reasoning is also not established.

Close ended questionnaire has the primary purpose of investigating and digging deeper into the responses to understand the patterns, choices or opinions of respondents. Since there are no categories and limit of options to answer the questions thus respondents can answer as required and wanted. These questions lead to better understanding and judgements. The major disadvantage is that it is time consuming and requires efforts to go through answer of each individual. Mostly respondents don't take it too serious to think about exact or proper answer so decoding becomes difficult sometimes.

Contingency questions are specially framed for particular situations or circumstances and hence cannot apply to general population but a target market who go through the likely experiences. The major advantage of this questionnaire is that it is best suitable to give exact results or outcomes for which surveyor is looking by targeting most relevant audience. The main disadvantage is that it becomes hard sometimes to identify the relevant audience.

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The major biases which might occur in questionnaire because of question sequencing are :

Primacy Effect / bias : The bias in which respondent answers the questions on the basis of the first option provided...even if rest of questions or options tend to be relevant also

Order bias : The way questions are ordered might result in bias towards following a particular order while responding.

Recency bias : The bias based on answering the rest of questions based on the most recent option or question asked.

These biases and their impact on the survey outcome can be eliminated through randomising the options which will result in each option having the equal chance of being selected. It will also help reducing the chances of receiving bmisleading data.

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In my opinion the most important pitfalls in questionnaire construction involve:

Cognitive biases and errors as explained above which can mislead the data and provide biased answers thus reducing the level of accuracy of survey.

Keeping sentences too long or too short which either reduces the interest of responder to read through or leaves them with misunderstandings and confusions. Avoiding unnecessary details is important to keep questions precise and meaningful to retain the interests of responders.

Using particular jargons which might not be understood by all of the population resulting in providing answers without understanding them.

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Thanks dear student.. Hope this helps..

Good luck nad please rate if satisfied :)